A few weeks after the UN Earth summit, major donor nations will gather to discuss a long awaited dream for one of the world’s poorest regions — a dam to provide electric power and better management of the Niger River in west Africa.
The mighty river Niger is Africa’s third longest waterway. It is clogged in many parts with oxygen sapping water hyacinth, threatened by creeping sand banks and periodically afflicted by drought so severe that in some parts the water slows to a trickle.
For years, the late president Seyni Kountche of Niger wanted a dam to provide hydroelectric power and feed water to farming lands in the parched plains upstream from the capital Niamey.
The plains lie in a band of witheringly hot semi-desert country known as the Sahel that stretches virtually the entire width of the African continent along the southern fringes of the creeping Sahara desert.
But Niger is on the United Nations list of 49 Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in the world. Its average annual per capita income is calculated at $200, life expectancy at 51 years, and only 21% of men and seven percent of women are literate, according to UN figures.
For a country that exports uranium, which accounts for 40% of its average national income of $245-million, the external debt is a staggering $1,6-billion.
Given these statistics, it simply could never afford a dam. The Kandadji project, as Kountche called it, was out of the question. Yet the dream has lived on for nearly 30 years and Niamey actually has a stand at the UN Earth summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, showing what it would look like.
The cost will be decided when donor nations meet in Niamey October 24 and 25.
Once the funds are allocated, the government hopes to begin construction at a carefully chosen site 180 kilometres upstream from Niamey by the year 2004, and complete it by 2012. The dam commissioner, Doulla Harouna, said he estimated a cost of some $300-million.
For a country twice the size of France with a population of 10-million, the dam is expected to bring untold improvements to the 80% of the population who have to live off the land, he said.
The dam’s 165 megawatt power output will also enable the country to rely less on neighbouring Nigeria for electrical power, he added.
An estimated 35 000 people living in a dozen villages at the site will be provided accommodation elsewhere once construction begins. – Sapa-AFP